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10 Hours Into Tales Of Vesperia For Nintendo Switch

I have been waiting a long time for a “Tales of” game to come to the Switch. It always seemed like a great fit and I knew it was only a matter of time.

My first introduction to a Tales of game was back in the Game Cube days. I remember that I had some extra Christmas money to blow and I decided to take a chance on Tales of Symphonia, which ended up paying off. I loved the art direction, the combat, and the Saturday morning style story. It was just a really fun, low stakes, game to play when you have nothing better to do.

I had been in a mood to play these games again, and almost bought it for the Xbox before Nintendo’s E3 announcement. I figured that I could wait and enjoy it on the platform that I wanted in the first place.

Tales of Vesperia has been a pretty enjoyable experience and on par with what I expected. Though I am no where near the end of the game, I find it to have been a great investment and I have enjoyed exploring the landscape and uncovering the finer details of the no so complex story.

The Story So Far

Basically, you play the game as a young man named Yuri who sets off to track down a Blastia thief who stole an important Blastia from a water system that allowed water to flow to the poor neighborhood of this grand city.

(CONTEXT: Blastias are, from what I can gather, somewhat like materia in Final Fantasy 7. They are used to control barriers that allow the cities to be protected from the monsters that live outside and they also give people certain abilities if they are able to wield them. It is rare to see someone wield a blastia and therefore only the most elite have them.)

While on the hunt of the thief, you are eventually caught breaking into a home and set to the castle dungeons. You meet a man who helps you escape and eventually run into a nobal woman who is attempting to fend off the castle protectors as she herself is trying to escape in order to track down a man Named Flynn. Apparently, Yuri grew up with Flynn and she asks for his help in tracking him down. Seeing as this could be beneficial for him, since Flynn is pretty high up in the Royal Knights, and he could possibly help him and his community, he agrees to have her travel with him in search of Flynn and this thief.

So far, I have traveled across land and sea in order to help various people and their communities in the hope that they can lead me in the direction I seek. There have been some twists and turns, nothing to groundbreaking, but still what I expected from a game like this.

Combat

The combat is better then I remeber it and it gives me something that I actually strive to get better at.

The enemies can be seen walking around in the overworld, which gives you the ability to either attack or run away instead of the classic JRPG random encounter. If you choose to engage, then the screen shatters and you are thrust into a round area in which to battle. The movement is free form and it gives you the ability to engage in combat or run around you target. I found that this is kind of a easy way to game the system if you are battling against one particularly strong opponent. I can get the enemy to come after me, and then I can just run around him, making him follow me, and have my allies attack him at a distance. It won’t work for the entire battle, but it is a way to heal up and get some extra damage in.

You have a basic three hit attack that can mold into a multi hit combo if you use an art. Each character has a particular art style that is assigned to them. Yuri is more “up close combat” focused so many of his arts require you to be near the opponent. These can lead to some pretty cool looking battles when all of your attacks flow into one another.

I just got to a place in the game where more move sets have been opened up to me and I now have a chance to see how great the flow of combat truly is.

There is a lot to love about this game so far and I am excited to get further in it. Some of the dialogue could use some touch up, but that’s really not a new concept for JRPGs. I feel like this will be something that can help me kill some time before next week when Resident Evil 2 and Kingdom Hearts 3 comes out. They will kill my free time…